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Saturday, October 24, 2009

Try It, You'll Like It.

I was thinking today about food (What a surprise!). No, seriously. I'm a waiter at a busy chain restaurant, and I meet people all the time who don't like this vegetable or that condiment, and I thought to myself, speaking solely as someone who likes pretty much all food, what is it that makes a person not like certain foods? The ones I hear most are cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, and cheese ( in salads) and mushrooms (in entrees and sauces).

Well, let's start with my food likes and dislikes. When I was a kid, I didn't care much for tomatoes and cheese, and I especially didn't like parsnips. Well, I grew to love cheese and toms, and when I was in my early 20's I was challenged about my parsnip dislike, so I tried one, and found that it was actually good. Nowadays the only things I don't care for are things that are too strong or spicy, or things that are pickled, and even then it's not all the time, just if I'm in the mood. I do believe that pickled jalapeños are a travesty, though. A jalapeño is a perfectly lovely, if a little hot, pepper. Pickling it not only robs it of its flavor, it adds another nasty dimension to pickling. So why a restaurant like Subway, whose tagline is "eat fresh" wants to use jalapeños that taste like butt is a mystery to me.

The mushroom one gets me. People come in and ask for things that come with mushrooms and ask to 86 the mushrooms. Mushrooms are delicious. I don't get it.

And then there's the good ole Southern cuisine. Specifically, greens. Collard or otherwise. If you have to cook it forever and add half a pig to it to make it taste the way you like, then perhaps it's not worth eating in the first place.

Another food thing that ticks me off is the pictures that fast-food restaurants use in their advertising. Why is it that these pictures, plastered all over the windows of these establishments, bear almost no relation to the limp, soggy, small and lukewarm items that you get served when you order them? Let's take Taco Bell as an example. The first time I saw the picture of the 'Mexican Pizza' I thought it looked awesome. So I ordered one. The tiny little disc I got in its place was gone in about four bites. Sad.

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Anyway, it's time for today's Halloween music. Here it is in all its spooky glory.